Visa, Samsung to Provide Mobile Payments at 2012 Olympics

Specialized NFC-enabled Samsung phones to be handed out to athletes, sold to consumers.

Samsung and Visa today announced plans to provide contactless mobile payments technology to attendees and merchants at the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Samsung will provide a near-field communication equipped mobile handset. Visa will provide its contactless mobile payment application, which lets the user pay by selecting "pay" and holding the phone in front of a contactless reader at the point of purchase.

In London, contactless payments are accepted at more than 60,000 locations.

Samsung and Visa will work together to provide the contactless enabled Olympics handset to Visa and Samsung sponsored athletes and to sell it to consumers. A Visa-enabled SIM card will be required for use with the device in order to make purchases at contactless retailers.

Samsung launched one of the first NFC phones in France in 2010; it also unveiled the first Android phone equipped with NFC capabilities last year.